Find us on Facebook

2014 Convocation

The Boonshoft School of Medicine welcomed 110 new students during the Convocation and White Coat Ceremony last July, formally marking the start of their medical education.

During the ceremony, students took their first oath of professional medical ethics, concluding with the words, “I commit myself to a lifelong journey of learning how to cure, relieve, and comfort with humility and compassion.”

Each student also received a white coat—a traditional symbol of the medical profession—personalized with his or her name and the medical school patch.

This is the second year that each student also received a stethoscope engraved with the words “Excel in Leaving a Mark,” thanks to the Jason Madachy Foundation, Neal Barney, M.D., class of 1983, and other alumni. The foundation has given hundreds of stethoscopes to medical students nationwide in honor of Jason Madachy, who died tragically in June 2007 just before he was about to start medical school at Marshall University.

The class of 2018 was selected from a group of more than 3,600 applicants. Educated at various universities across Ohio, including Case Western Reserve University, Ohio State University, and Wittenberg University, members of the incoming class also hail from Brown University, Cornell University, Duke University, UCLA, and University of Notre Dame, among others.

From volunteering at homeless shelters to building houses for Habitat for Humanity, they already have shown a strong commitment to community service both at home and abroad. Several have taken mission trips with their churches, sororities, or fraternities. One student volunteered at a smallpox/ polio immunization clinic in Togo, Africa. In the United States, others have volunteered at after-school programs, outreach programs, nursing homes, HIV intervention programs, and the Red Cross.

Forty-eight percent are women, while 52 percent are men. Seventy percent speak more than one language, including American Sign Language, Arabic, French, and Spanish.